There are some who questioned the idea of dogs being deliberately domesticated from wolves is that it doesn’t explain the existence of pariah dogs. That too arguably has problems. I think dog domestication might be best regarded as analogous to macaque domestication (as in Southeast Asia). That makes more sense in that their ecologies vary as much as the degree of socialisation to people do.
They can be tamed to ward off pests, become pests themselves and are trainable. Though that may depend on the individual animal (arguably for cats to some extent) though it’s also a matter if the owner wants to do it or not. I’ve read studies about macaques in which if they’re domesticated, it’s more complicated than that and again dependent on context.
Same goes for cats and dogs. (The idea that most modern domestic dogs came from dingo dogs makes sense as many breeds happened recently.) While animals straying’s attributable to owner negligence, it gets complicated by ecological and environmental factors as well. Most stray dog incidents in Germany and France often occur in rural areas, especially those with forests and farms.
That closely resembles studies of macaques raiding farms which only deepens the similarities. Same for cats to whatever extent. That clergy and people in general have been reported to care for cats, dogs and monkeys’s shouldn’t be mistaken in understanding domestication.
Keep in mind that training dogs en masse’s rather recent. Let alone in the form we understand it to be and most people who do own dogs don’t bother training them much (or often) either. They usually get them for simply hunting and guarding. Similar for cats too. Not that owners who don’t train dogs are necessarily careless.
But that dog domestication isn’t a matter of simply domesticating wolves (or wolves simply habituating themselves to people). Rather a case of how cats, dogs and monkeys come to be depending on ecological context as complicated by owner negligence.
fynm 